This is a long essay, so right now I'll just respond to a few points.
(1) Cultural Revolution. This is a very complicated topic, with much more nuance than either ultras or ML's give it. But to speak very broadly, the problem isn't that it mobilized the people to do nasty things to the bourgeoisie; the problem is that it was voluntarist and anarchistic. Hurting and shaming the bourgeoisie is a worthy goal, but it accomplishes nothing if it isn't accompanied by a real increase in people's living standards. The tendency of late Mao, and even more, of the Gang of Four, was to think that communism could be built simply by instilling in people the right ideology; which is idealist rather than materialist, for ideology is a function of material conditions. Thus Deng's corrective, "socialism is not poverty," was desperately needed. One can argue that Deng went to far, and ultimately fell into right deviation. But we should not allow this to obscure the fact that Gang of Four were massively left-deviant, and that Deng's occasional rightism was simply the inevitable reaction. Thus, if China during the 1990s came dangerously close to neoliberalism, it was ultimately the fault, not of Deng, but of the Gang of Four.
The DPRK, by the way, does uphold a cultural revolution -- it is an integral part of the Three Fronts theory, so the writer of this article is wrong again. The difference is that here the cultural revolution is ongoing process, proceeding alongside economic development and gradually transforming the whole of society. It is planned, rather than voluntaristic. And this brings us to the central problem with "Maoism" and all forms of ultraleftism. Processes need to be guided; you cannot simply hand people guns and assume good things will happen.
(2) On "Vladimir-Fucking-Putin." The author finds it odd that MLs give critical support to the Russian Federation in its fight against Ukrainian Nazis, but not to the Shining Path in its struggle against the Fujimori and his goons. The difference is this: Putin, by stomping the Ukro-Nazis, is actually performing a useful service. What Gonzalo did was the reverse of useful: it alienated the masses, and drove people who otherwise might have sympathized with socialism straight into the arms of the Fujimori regime. There is a reason that many Peruvian leftists today believe (in the face of any real evidence) that the Shining Path was a CIA op. Which brings us to --
(3) Gonzalo was violent, but so were the Bolsheviks. The implied "goodness" of violence smacks of anarchism, or of Georges Sorel. As Marxists, we are not for violence; we merely recognize its occasional necessity. We don't do the fascist thing of walking around and advocating violence for its own sake; that is adolescent. We would all prefer a peaceful transition to socialism; the problem is that the bourgeoisie never lets it happen. We advocate, not violence as such, but the right of people to defend themselves by any means necessary. If some Gonzaloite can explain to me how killing pregnant women and scalding peasants to death constitutes necessary and appropriate revolutionary violence, I'll gladly become an ultra; but until then, I'll keep thinking of the Shining Path as basically Azov with a red flag.
(4) Why don't AES states export revolution anymore? The DPRK does, in a limited way; obviously it can't do much given present circumstances, but they do give what aid they can to revolutionary movements around the world. The question really comes down to: Why doesn't China export revolution?
The flippant answer is that we should be grateful China doesn't; after all, their attempts to export revolution during the 1970s led to some of the strangest foreign policy the world has ever seen. The serious answer is this. Global capitalism is in its last, decadent stage: accumulation through destruction. No longer able to produce real wealth, the bourgeoisie create wealth in the imperial core by destroying it elsewhere. Thus, it is imperialism that now must export revolution in order to survive. To uphold stability, and global trade, in the face of never-ending destruction is now, ironically, the revolutionary position.
If I wasn't really busy and this wasn't so long, I'd tackle the arguments, because this is rehashing everything the maoists are completely wrong about, disproven by history. I hope others tackle these arguments in the spirit of zhou enlai and deng xiaoping.
I stopped reading at the point when he quoted Marx about top-down. Literally the same quote was also chosen by mensheviks almost 120 years ago for basically the same purpose.
Maoists do make compelling points. As communists we should be considering the Maoist point of view without shit-slinging and we should consider criticisms to be in good faith.
The obstacle for me is that Maoist organizing has only gotten weaker support from the masses since the 90s and there has not been any successful projects. From an analysis of theory standpoint, I often find them spot on in many of their observations. The global communist movement is a lot weaker than we (in the West at least) would like to admit. China may be making advances for China and helping to weaken Western imperialism's hold on the world, which we all obviously applaud, but there's no concrete evidence to suggest that they will be leading the global communist movement from a place of ideology anytime soon.
We are in a period of retreat and concession to the bourgeoisie still. Are there encouraging signs for the future? Sure. But we've got a long way to go. It's no surprise that there are some overwhelming obstacles for M-L parties in the world that have nerfed the revolutionary energy. But communists are still in the position of gaining support among the masses and you can't force the revolution without a truly revolutionary situation, especially after 30+ years of unimpeded neoliberalism. Perfect theory is never perfect in practice, and Maoism from Peru and the RIM is proof of this. Meanwhile, the general strike happening in India is a result of the M-L party organizing workers, not the Maoist party. We're really only just getting started. We can't let our desperate hopes put the cart before the horse.
Sorry if this comment wasn't the most clear or connected. I'm just kind of spitballing what's coming to mind. I personally thought it was a good article. Thanks for sharing.
but there's no concrete evidence to suggest that they will be leading the global communist movement from a place of ideology anytime soon.
SWCC, the Doi Moi reforms, and other similar measures are showing that utilizing markets to serve socialism is 100% effective. China is either already beating or about to beat the US on every meaningful metric: % of world trade, life expectancy, home ownership rates, education, patents / tech advancement... etc.
Maoists on the other hand are still playing theory games in their heads, constantly bickering with each other about who is more revisionist, and killing and alienating themselves from every group / peoples they encounter.
He supports Cultural Revolution. I can say it’s not a good article just by this point
The evidence for the Marxist-Leninist position becoming increasingly correct is a few reddit posts and one excellent Roderic Day article. Lol. A lot of my pro-China comrades hate Duterte and support Maoist revolutions in India and the Philippines, as do I, not even Joma hates China as much as online Maoists do.
This chasing of ideological purity and discarding real-world information is undialectical.
In fact, Rosa Luxemburg made another great point here. Marxism should be treated as a living thing, at its best when it is interacting with the world, but all of the meaningful interactions of the past forty years have been Maoist actions. Marxism-Leninism and the respective, remaining ‘Marxist-Leninist’ organizations and parties have been caught-on-the-back foot, or docile, or lacking in direction, with few consequential actions taken, at best, and useless, irrelevant, if not outright misguided or wrong in many parts of the world at worst.
Marxism-Leninsm-Maoism has yet to produce a successful revolution, unless you are counting Nepal which I know you hate to talk about so let's discard it. How can you look at what Marxist-Leninist countries have done over the past fifty years and say that Marxism-Leninism has not advanced? It has advanced greatly, but you just dismiss these advances as "revisionism".
